#primers

intro and outro to radlib theory

"The most common critique against radlibs I've heard from leftists, broadly, is that radlib 'theory,' if it could be called that at all, has no political substance. It's a regurgitation of the liberal status quo because it has no politics beyond superficial idealisms about 'social justice' and 'support for rights' (usually natural). While I agree with that critique, I feel like really getting into the details of why and how radical liberalism specifically appeals to people—and not just how liberalism or bastardized leftist ideologies like bourgeois socialism appeals to people—is important in order to help radlibs and would-be radlibs unpack and take a more critical approach towards their own thinking. This essay will break down two tactics that I've noticed radlibs rely on over the past few years: one, the desire to avoid being bad, and two, minoritarian equivocation."

—"Breaking Down the Radlib Playbook: Some Cursory Explanations for Why and How Radlibs Think" by parrhesia

"Radical theory springs from the energy of insurgent desire first as a basic recognition that the social context in which we find ourselves impoverishes our lives. Because we have been educated not to think, but rather to have thoughts, it is very easy to fall from this basic recognition into accepting one or another 'radical' ideology, mouthing the appropriate slogans and participating in mindless activism (better called reactivism) which jumps and dances for every cause and issue, but never attacks society at it’s root. I’ve heard 'class war' anarchists (many of them from upper middle class backgrounds) justify such stupidity by declaring any attempts at more precise and critical thinking to be an expression of classist privilege- even when those making the attempts are high school dropout lumpen. But there is nothing radical about stupidity or 'thinking' in slogans even when they’re anarchist slogans.

Radical theory is the attempt to understand the complex system of relationships which is society, how it reproduces itself and the individual as a part of itself, and how one can begin to undermine its control and take back one’s life in order to become a self-creative individual. It has no place in either the ivory tower of the academy or that of the mindless ideological (re)activism. It is rather an integral part of an active insurgence against society."

—"Radical Theory: A Wrecking Ball for Ivory Towers" by Feral Faun

"Eqbal Ahmed once said, “If you're serious about it, define yourself—define your topic, define your subject. Then, proceed to explicate it. If you're not defining, you are evading. You're trying to run away—you're trying to cheat me.” This list of following definitions is my attempt not to cheat anyone but myself.

Eqbal Ahmed 曾經說：「如果你要來認真的話，給自己下個定義—為你的話題、為你的題目下個定義。不在下定義的話，你就是在迴避。你就是想看看能不能逃避—看看能不能騙我。」下列的定義單是我希望除了自己誰都騙不過去的努力。"

—"split hairs of the mad dog 鑽瘋狗的腳趾甲尖" by typhotic iceberg 煙霧冰山

"The whole point of talking about class and 'the proles' is to insist on the very basic way in which people from different 'communities' have essentially similar experiences, and to show that people from the same 'communities' should in fact hate each other. This is the starting point to fighting the existing communities. When we begin to fight for our own interests we see that others are doing the same thing. Prejudices fall away, and our anger is directed where it belongs.

We are not weak because we are divided. We are divided because we are weak.

The existing communities become irrelevant as they are attacked, and they are attacked by becoming irrelevant.

Racism and sexism are unappealing when working men and women of different races are fighting their class enemies side by side. And that fight becomes more effective by involving people from different 'communities'."

—"Work Community Politics War" by prole.info

theory + practice = praxis

"While the psychologizing lingo of ‘fragility’ and privilege is attractive to liberals looking for an indemnifying moral purification, happily it doesn’t cover the full picture of whiteness. The nationwide uprising around the murder of George Floyd revealed that there’s a whole swath of white people out there who are motivated by a desire not to uphold whiteness but to exit it. What do you do when you want to leave, but you don’t know where to go?"

—"Talk Amongst Yourselves: From White Guilt to Race Traitors" by City Inhospitable

"As oppressed peoples, 'hate' tells us that reactionary violence is about bad feelings. The individual perpetrator, full of ignorance and hate, acts it out against a helpless victim. Hate crime legislation, supposedly, enables the state to protect the victim and their community by locking away the perpetrator. The sentence, along with thoughts and prayers from politicians, sends the message that 'hate has no home here.'

But our lives are not threatened by bad feelings alone; our enemies are structures of power and the genocidal state itself. The frame of 'hate' deliberately obscures that Canada exists only through displacement and domination. After a viral rant where ex-Obama advisor Stuart Seldowitz threatened an Egyptian food vendor with torture and deportation, Manhattan prosecutors pressed charges. But for every Seldowitz charged for terrorizing someone on the street, a thousand more continue to set foreign and domestic policy.

It is all the more urgent, then, to understand that 'anti-hate' is counter-insurgency. Hate laws, hate crime units, and the very frame of 'hate' itself are state ploys for our trust, promising protection in exchange for assimilation. But, though cliché, our liberation is bound up together. Our safety can only come from collective struggle against settler colonialism and white supremacy."

—"Anti-hate: the new face of political policing" by T.Y. Kui